


Plus Ça Change

by taichara



Category: Yoroiden Samurai Troopers | Ronin Warriors
Genre: Post-Canon Divergence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-18
Updated: 2018-07-18
Packaged: 2019-06-12 07:28:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15334881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taichara/pseuds/taichara
Summary: Arago's defeated, Shuten is back, and four former netherworld generals are working to get their collective act together.





	Plus Ça Change

**Author's Note:**

  * For [justanotherray](https://archiveofourown.org/users/justanotherray/gifts).



Anubis stared at the rice cooker like it was going to bite him. Which, to be fair -- not that he felt like it -- it already did once, if you counted the near-miss of a burning he'd narrowly avoided the first time he'd tried to use the damned thing. But _apparently_ this was how it was going to be from here on out, so --

"It's not going to leap up from the countertop and slit your throat, you know."

The amused drawl from behind him earned a snort and a moment's solid ignoring while Anubis, very pointedly, loaded the cooker and set the timer. Properly. Because of course he did. Only after all that little ritual did he about-face, lean against the counter, and fix a jaundiced glare onto the chuckling Shuten.

"Do I look like an idiot? Of course it's not. Call it being cautious if you'd rather, whatever you want."

Oh, but apparently Shuten found this even more entertaining --

"Of a household tool? If you say so."

"As if the few -- weeks, at most, wasn't it? -- of dragging yourself around in Yagyu's wake made you an unqualified expert in all things in the modern world. I don't see you dealing with it."

Sniping, but with no teeth in it. It was a nice change, if he were honest, even if the two of them -- the four of them -- hadn't managed to entirely give up four-centuries-and-more of old habits, and it wasn't like he Anubis was actually, really, truly meaning any of it. It was just all still _strange_ , at times. All of it. 

With a last glare at his appliance nemesis, Anubis stalked towards the kitchen door, muttering darkly, and Shuten glided along in _his_ wake, still amused.

-*-

_I suppose it's been a better idea than trying to separate us, but this arrangement has its downsides. Ah well._

Shuten thanked fate -- and not for the first time -- that Anubis wasn't waging a one-man war on the kitchen, no matter how much he was obviously tempted. Explaining away that much structural damage to the university officials was not anywhere near something he wanted to deal with ...

Slipping ahead in the hallway, he gave Anubis a companionable clout on the shoulder -- ducking the return swat with a flash of a grin -- and veered off into what passed for a 'living room' and really looked more like a makeshift dojo that grew over an exploded archive. Naaza was there already, scribbling notes to himself and occasionally squinting thoughtfully at the notebook he had in hand; Shuten itched to know what he was trying to dredge out of memory, but fell back on being (marginally) polite. besides, he had his own 'research' to get to before the evening was over.

_It's the least we can do, even if it took a few arm-twistings to get them to agree to it._

_Granted, it helped my surprise return from whatever took everyone off-balance enough to go along with damn near anything I could have suggested, though -- and I can't say I wasn't tempted to ..._

No, that was a bad road to start following. He stopped that train of thought cold and reached for his own stack of notes. Naaza had paused again; Shuten watched him for a moment just to have an excuse to marshal his own wits, shrugged off the heartbeat of temptation, and turned resolutely to the last batch of copied archives he'd been picking over earlier. 

It was a long and sometimes tedious (less so for him, more for some of the others) task, but it served a purpose: to give them all a re-grounding in the real world, and a focus while they rooted themselves back in said real world and grasped just _how much time_ had passed since they'd been bound to Arago. Shuten was sure -- and here the mirth threatened to escape again -- that making use of their recollections and commentaries to pinpoint artefacts, manuscripts and other ephemera was more than covering for allowing four societially-inept former warlords and demonic lieutenants of a chthonic conqueror to have their home and board covered on university grounds. Discreetly. And out of sight.

_As long as we don't tear the building down around us or paint it crimson, eh?_.

_Little fear of that now._

-*-

_He's enjoying all this, the bastard. Well, good that one of us is._

The inaccuracies in the text he was currently picking through (damned linguistic shifts) were amusing enough, but Naaza happily gave them up to indulge in studying the red across the room methodically setting up his own workspace. Always so fastidious, that one, even in the netherworld. It was amusing then and still was now, and Naaza expected he'd never get tired of it. 

It was good to have the four of them in one place again, a comfortable familiarity made less chancy by having realized, finally, that they didn't _need_ to be at each other's throats. The rest? Modern clothing was odd, language shifts were aggravating and the rest took even more getting used to -- but Naaza for one welcomed the conveniences, and all the more so when someone else was dealing with them. For instance, like right that very moment. 

A low rumble out in the hall and an answering bark of hoarse laughter, then separating footsteps, told Naaza that Rajura was headed away (towards the kitchen, apparently) while Anubis was ... coming through the door to the living room a breath later. Naaza ignored Shuten's half-hearted protest, leaned over slightly, and snagged a bottle of juice to be promptly lobbed in Anubis' direction. 

Useful things, plastic bottles. Couldn't complain about those.

He snickered at Anubis' bottle salute, settling back into his comfortable slouch again.

"Sounds like you just slipped out of kitchen duty."

"Of course I did. What's keeping you occupied this time, eh? I don't need to ask _him_ , he'll talk my damn ears off anyway."

Shuten mutted something unflattering from behind a facsimile picture scroll. Naaza smirked.

"Today it's unlikely migration histories featuring distant-ish relatives ..."

-*-

The kitchen, mercifully, was not on fire. Rajura glanced briefly at the rice cooker -- it seemed fine -- and turned his attention to hunting out a few chopping boards and a clean set of knives.

Rice was all well and good but as long as he was changing plans mid-stride again, he might as well go all the way with it; it was getting cooler outside, making old wounds likely to complain, and something warmer and more substantial than the first-planned accompaniments was appealing. Conveniently, 'warmer' was both easy enough to do _and_ would get them all in one place for longer than ten minutes, as long as the donabe was ... ah, there. Good.

_Convenience is frugal scavenging long since turned into communal entertainment ... or something else suitably pithy._

He smiled thinly at his own overwrought meandering. Of course things hardly needed to be complicated, not meals and not life in general; that they hadn't throated each other out of stress-induced panic after the final battle was all the omen he needed, really.

Apparently they _could_ still be human after all.

_Though Shuten's fooling no one, with this apparent reversion to sharp-tongued antics belonging to centuries before his second master snapped him up. One can hope he realizes how transparent he's being._

Unlike Naaza and Anubis, who weren't even trying. That was a refreshing bit of transparency, and Rajura was mildly surprised at how much he'd missed that concept.

Chop, chop, chop; prepping the bits and bobs, slices of fish and handfuls of mushrooms and tofu blocks (and why not add those oddly-textured 'fried' ones for variety) and all the rest was oddly soothing, a little like a meditation of its own. It gave him time to sort out his thoughts and consider how to approach the others with them; another luxury he'd not considered in a very long time indeed.

... Well, that was it. Rajura cocked his head, measuring up the neat piles and bowls; yes, he'd added something everyone would want. Also good. A quick rinse and it was time for getting stock and the first bits-and-bobs into the pot ... and then to clean. Always, cleaning.

Come to that, cleaning up their messes was exactly what they were all doing, wasn't it, when not baiting each other or working at their own useful, mindless 'tasks'.

Rajura set down the dishcloth, prepared a bit of tea, sipped it contemplatively as the hot pot simmered away.

No, it all really wasn't that different at all, was it?


End file.
